Wind Machine

Hey Steph!
  So I've had quite the experience tonight. A new friend of mine invited a group to her family's farm to watch the cherry harvest. Now, when I think of farming, I don't really think the word fascinating, but I was wrong. It was fascinating. Her family owns 1500 acres of land of which 200 acres are set aside for tart cherries. I got a little lesson in cherry farming, and I'd love to share it with you.

This was taken with my phone, so it isn't the best quality, but this was packed with cherries.

  Unlike sweet cherries, tart cherries do not need to be handpicked, which means they get shaked off the trees by these amazingly powerful and creatively named machines called cherry shakers. Watch their amazingness below:

    They are able to harvest 1,000 pounds from every five trees--that's 200 pounds of cherries on every tree! The cherries are then hoisted up a conveyor belt and placed in a bin full of water, where the cherries sink and the leaves and branches float and can be removed. They are stored in water for 6 hours so they will be firmer to be pitted later to be frozen or dried.

    The thing I was struck by was how much work went into harvesting the cherries. When they are harvesting, they are doing it for about 20 hours a day. They are also cleaning and pitting all of the cherries. In the winter, the farmers are always watchful that the trees don't freeze, so they have thermometers throughout the orchard, which alert the farmers if the temperatures get too low, even in the middle of the night. Then they set up tents and set up propane torches along the orchard. They also have these cool things called wind machines.

This isn't my photo. I forgot to take one. I stole it from here: http://carterorchards.com/images/2013/windmachine.JPG

wind machine: an electric windmill-like machine that sends warm air floating above the cold air down to warm up orchards

Even warming up the orchard by 3 or 4 degrees can save the crop. Besides all this work, the farmers are also pruning and mowing all those acres. Then there's all the work with getting the produce to market and working in a co-op with other farmers and hoping you have a good harvest. Basically, farmers rock.

Hope you're enjoying life!

Cheers,

Amanda

What fruit or vegetable do you look forward to coming into season? 

Kill Devil Hill

Hey Amanda,

So, I'm at the beach.

Can you hear it?

Specifically, I'm about 5000 feet from where the Wright brothers had their first flight. I learned a lot of about aviation and some super amazing pilots. However, I haven't written about it yet.  Count this as a preview, and I'll see you next week. 

Love you,

Steph

Photo Credit: Travelpod

Hannah

Hey Steph,
          Today I'm going step away from our normal format of definitions to focus on an awesome woman instead. On the advent of my 26th birthday I made a list of 26 goals I would do in the next year. One of them was to study three different women and share my new-found knowledge on this blog. The first woman I studied was Hannah of Bible fame. What a strong example of womanhood in a culture that we don't particularly see as the most empowering to females!
          To start, let me give you a short bio of Hannah's life:

          Hannah--in what seems to be an epidemic among Biblical matriarchs--is barren. She wants nothing more than to be a mother. She has a supportive husband, Elkanah, but he doesn't seem to understand the extent of Hannah's sorrow. Hannah goes to the temple to pray and vows to God the life of her child in service if she is able to bear a child. Whereupon, she is immediately called drunken by the high priest. (Bet that she felt lower than low after that.) Once Eli, the high priest, discerns that Hannah is sincere in her plea to God, he tells her that her desire will be granted and sends her on his way. And it was. Hannah bears Samuel, the future prophet of Israel and fulfills her vow, giving him to Eli to be a priest of God.
          So here's what I've learned about Hannah. She is an example of confidence. Her desire of motherhood is in line with the great legacy of her foremothers. She is of the heritage of Eve, the mother of all living. She wants to fulfill that calling. And her society recognizes the significance of this calling. If a woman was not a mother, she was seen as worthless, not providing anything to the society. When Eli calls Hannah out for being drunken on the temple grounds, she responds, "Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial" (1 Sam. 1:16). Now, belial in Hebrew has three meanings: base wickedness, good-for-nothing, and worthlessness. Her response doesn't just bespeak her innocence in being drunk, but it confidently declares who she is. "I am not worthless. I am good-for-something." Her society is not teaching her that she has worth, but somehow Hannah knows she is worthwhile. I believe Hannah knows who she is because she has been diligent in her relationship with her Father in Heaven, who shares with her that she is a daughter of God.
          Hannah is also an example of persistent faith. From information given about Elkanah's other wife, Peninah, and her multiple children, it is clear that Hannah has been waiting years to be a mother. This inference is reinforced by the vow she makes. You don't just wake up one morning and make a vow to give up your only offspring in order to be a mother. That vow is not made lightly. You would vow so many other vows before that vow. You'd vow your own life to one of service before making that vow. You would vow to give up all your possessions before giving up your son. Heck, you'd vow to give up watching Dr. Who and reading Harry Potter before you'd give up the child you are so desperate to have. It's possible Hannah had made other vows before, and I would be shocked if this was Hannah's first hysterical plea at the temple. No. I believe Hannah had cried hundreds, thousands, of prayers. In all of this, it would be so easy to curse God, who seemingly withholds the fulfillment of His own commandment to multiply and replenish the earth. It would be so easy to turn your back on the Creator who mandated the law which now makes you worthless in your society for having not fulfilled it. But Hannah didn't do that. She continually turned to God. And finally, at the end of her rope, her faith was proven right. She bore a son, Samuel, and she gave him up to the priesthood.

          Now Samuel is an important character in the Old Testament. We know him for hearing the voice of God as a boy, but he will be known for much more than this. At the time Samuel enters the temple, the priesthood is in a sorry state. Eli is a mediocre high priest, and his two sons are outright blasphemous. The state of Israel mimics this. Israel is fragmented, seeing themselves as several different tribes rather than one. They have turned to idols and false Gods. It is Samuel that would clean up the pedigree of the priests and provide a spiritual leader who point Israel back to Jehovah. In Old Testament culture, it seems that the women are the ones who name their children. It is not a coincidence that Hannah named her son Samuel or "name of God," for Samuel would be the one to point the Israelites to the right name of God, Jehovah. He anoints King Saul and then David as the first kings of Israel, which unifies the land and makes Israel one of the political powers in what would be called the Old World. God needed Samuel to be where he was. He needed Hannah to do what she did.
          Steph, so many times I'm stuck in a place of waiting, wondering why I am too weak to overcome this trial and escape it. But what if I'm like Hannah? God needed a man like Samuel in the priesthood, but Eli's descendants weren't cutting it. He needed someone else. Hence, Hannah's situation. Hannah wasn't just asked to be barren for a season. She was barren for years--for so long that she vows to give up her son if she is able to have him! It was the very trial of waiting that allowed Hannah to be what God needed her to be. She wouldn't make that vow after one year of patience and sorrow but after many, many years of pain. She was not given that trial because she was weak, but because she was strong! Not any woman would make the vow she did. God chose one of his powerhouse daughters to endure and fulfill His needs. In the midst of her longtime turmoil, she was exactly where she was supposed to be for she was becoming a woman that would end up giving her son to God.
          What if I'm "waiting" right where I should be? What if our trials of singlehood, unemployment, disease, prolonged doubt, and childlessness are given us so that we can be exactly where God needs us to be?

Love ya, Steph!

Amanda Kae

P.S. Hannah had more children after Samuel, so she was able to mother in the end.

Dissertation

Hey Amanda,

Kudos for all of your work on your thesis lately! I figured I'd give you some dissertation inspiration. Hence,  three dissertations that changed the world. In no particular order.

Linus Torvalds-- for his Master's thesis, Torvalds created the Linux kernel that allowed opensource software to you know...actually work. Hence why it's called LINux. (Or if your Richard Stallman,  GNU/Linux ) He's now a millionaire.

If they ever make a movie about Claude Shannon's life, he really needs to be played by Jude Law.

Claude Shannon's master's thesis was about boolean logic and how it could be applied to electrical circuitry  to form logic gates (i.e. Binary). This is essentially tantamount to inventing the computer. Here's a round of virtual O'Douls for making the modern era possible, Mr. Shannon, we're glad you earned your hood.

de Broglie would be played by Charlie Chaplin. 

Louis de Broglie changed our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter in his 1924 thesis. He posited Wave-Particle Duality, and despite the lackluster approval of his thesis committee, earned both his degree and a Nobel Prize for Physics.

Dissertation: pain, suffering, and dedication that precedes wearing an awesome robe with witch sleeves

Go get 'em tiger,
Stephanie

Neologism

Hey Steph!
       Be prepared to journey down a long linguistic tunnel with me. I've been making myself focus on my master's thesis this past month, and I've been carried deep into the birthplace of words, trying to navigate how we continue to add thousands of words to our language every century. Simply put, it is fascinating! But because I'm spending half my day doing this research, I'd rather not write more about it here, so instead I'd like to talk about one of the great parents of words--William Shakespeare. See a couple of weeks ago, I went down to the Utah Shakespeare Festival and saw Love's Labours Lost. It was fantastic! The theater is outdoors and built to mimic theaters of Shakespeare's time. I was swept away by the wit of the dialogue and the timeless theories on human interaction--plus there was a load of strong women, so of course I loved it. We loved it so much that we came back the next night to see The Tempest. And then the next night to see King John. 

The Utah Shakespeare Festival theater is suh-weet!

       As an English undergrad, I quickly realized that just because a work was considered a classic, didn't mean I necessarily thought it deserved to be. Some authors are famous because they wrote a work at the right time and the right place. Take Uncle Tom's Cabin. Not necessarily Pulitzer-winning writing, but man was this an important book. Others are famous for good literary reason, but I still don't love them. (Sorry to cramp on all you Willa Cather fans out there, but My Antonia was the longest book I've ever read at 232 pages long, if you know what I mean.) I've had my ups and downs with Shakespeare, but I've reached a point where I get his acclaim. Shakespeare's fame is somewhat inconceivable to me. How is it that a playwright (an area of literature we currently aren't very keen on. When was the last time a playwright was a New York Times Bestseller?) from four hundred years ago is one of the most well-known names in the world? Besides naming Queen Elizabeth, I don't think very many people could name another person who lived about the same time as Shakespeare and especially not another writer or playwright. (Bonus points go to whomever was thinking "Christopher Marlowe" or "Ben Jonson" in their heads.) I, like many others, don't know why Shakespeare has rockstar status. Fortunately for me, that's not the intent of this post. Nope, I want to talk about neologisms.

"I'm Shakespeare, and I'm so cool, I'm made of words!"

neologism: a newly minted word

       Neologism is a word linguists created so they wouldn't have to say the long-winded phrase "new word." Shakespeare is the king of neologisms. He used 17,677 different words to write his 37 surviving plays. Out of those words 1,700 were coined by Shakespeare. Check out a list of a few of them here. The Oxford English Dictionary, aka the coolest dictionary ever--and yes, dictionaries can be cool, though some are pure dorks--cites Shakespeare as its #2 source for all its validating quotes. Pretty awesome! The #1 source is Time, which was written by hundreds of writers, so props to Will for making the #2 spot all by his lonesome. I don't know why, but this makes me super excited.
       Just think, if Shakespeare didn't exist, we'd have a lot fewer words to use. I wouldn't know how to express the fact that I swaggered down the hallway--not that I've ever successfully performed that verb, but it still makes me happy that I will be verbally prepared if I ever have success there. Thanks, Bill! All the scuffles in the world would just be fights. Bo-ring! And a little bit of my childhood would disappear with the non-birth of bedazzled. Man, Willy, you really brightened up our language!
       However, there is one word that makes me jealous every time I see it that we have thanks to Ol' Billy. It's Shakespearean. How cool would it be to do something so wonderful (or awful, though that's not cool) that your very name is turned into an adjective? To be fair, Shakespearean isn't as cool as Cartesian. René Descartes got the first half of his name chopped off and  two phonemes (that's linguist for "sounds") added to his name that aren't remotely related to his original last name. I just have to say, I'd be willing to sacrifice part of my name and add weird sounds to the end if it meant being an adjective. But what would the adjective of myself mean? Now there's an existential question.

Cheers,

Amanda Kae

If your name was made into an adjective, what would it be and what would it mean? I want to know, and maybe I'll share what mine would be too. 

     

How to be a Bad Parent in 5 Easy Steps

Hey Amanda,

I'm not really qualified to say how to be a great parent. But through college courses, a million books, and a lot of shopping trips to Wal-Mart, I think I've nailed down how to be bad one.  Since pretty much everyone ends up watching children at some point in their lives, I figured I'd pass on my top 5 things to avoid.

EDIT: Don't take the snark too seriously. Everyone breaks these rules. It's just something to shoot for.

1. Make threats you have no intention of keeping.
"If you kick my seat again, I will turn this car around." Really? Because to a kid this sounds like a get out of jail free card. Just one kick away from not having to sit through two hours of shopping.

Seriously though. If you say things you don't mean, you're teaching your kids to ignore you. Which leads me to number 2.

2. Make rules you don't mean to enforce.

Just throw them into the air willy-nilly. Don't think about it before you say it. And don't worry about changing your mind. Inconsistency just gives you a confused-kid bonus.

2. Teach children that anger is bad.

Don't give them a name for their feelings like jealousy, frustration, or disappointment. Don't tell them how to manage those emotions like drawing a picture, pounding some playdough, or talking about it with an adult. Just tell them that it's bad to be angry and to be happy. Try to throw in a quick explanation about why their anger is silly or their feelings are otherwise unimportant to you.

3. Assume your children have the same vocabulary and ability as you.

For instance, use a lot of abstract concepts to explain rules to 3 and 4 year olds. Talk about fairness and justice. Expect them to remember rules without reminders over the course of hours, or days. Also be frustrated when they won't sit still for long periods of time.

4. Compare kids to each other

"Why can't you sit quietly like Charlotte?" To translate this into child: "Why aren't you Charlotte?"

(A better tactic is to remind children, every time, of what behavior you want them to do in clear, concise, concrete language, such as "use your walking feet when we go outside." )

5. Care a lot about other people's opinion.

Have a different set of rules and punishments in public versus at home. It will totally disorient your children. And while your out, make sure your discipline is proportional to how embarrassed you feel rather than what your kid actually did.

That's a good start.

This post was inspired by a an idiophany I had today. Did you know that Dick van Dyke (aka Bert) also plays the old banker at the end of Mary Poppins? I know, crazy.

Idiophany: n. an idiot epiphany, e.g. realizing that "car" came from "carriage" or epitome is pronounced "apidomy"

I love Mary Poppins. (and I'm super jazzed for the new Emma Thompson movie!) Now, I don't really feel qualified to say what makes a great parent, but I'm sure it looks a lot like Mary Poppins.

Have a great weekend,
Steph

Wrinkles

Hi Steph,
A quick apology for not being regular with my posting. I've had the exciting but time-consuming pleasure of being with our parent and kid brother for the past month--yes, month--and haven't been on my game with posting. I want you to know, I wrote this post on my cell phone in the middle of Snow Canyon, Utah, which happens to the biggest naming fail in human history.

Exhibit A: The green in this picture does not adequately show the desolation that is Snow Canyon.

         The temperature was above 110 degrees, my enduring 1996 Honda Accord nearly overheated, but we got through. All of this was a week ago. This is just to show that I was thinking about you though my internet connection wasn't able to show it. 

         So I have dry skin and I live in the middle of what many people call a desert. It's a problem for my poor face, which is in a constant state of dearth, like a dry riverbed patterned with cracked segments of dirt. I've been around the moisturizer block once or twice but haven't quite found a product that quenches the thirst of my sad, decrepit skin.
         Thus, I've been on a journey to find a moisturizer that can sock a punch at desert dryness. I started my journey at my friendly neighborhood Walmart looking for ointments labeled "for extreme dryness" or "intense moisturizer" or other advertising mumbo jumbo. Instead I found the words "anti-wrinkle" and " age-defying" plastered on a hundred different products. At first, I was amused, but I quickly became frustrated as I searched bottle after bottle and ointment jar after ointment jar for a product focused on the health of my skin rather than on the looks of my skin. First of all, I'm 26 years old. I have no wrinkles, and I find it hard to believe that I'm the only young person, or older person for that matter, who has dry skin. Secondly--and more importantly--why are we so focused on looks? This ridiculous replacement of health for beauty surrounds us constantly. Advertisers sell whitening toothpaste louder than they do cavity-fighting toothpaste. We have lotion that tans our skin without the harmful rays of the sun, but it's still selling an arbitrary definition of beauty. (I own proudly my pasty white legs, thank you very much; however, I prefer the word "porcelain.")  Why are we anti-wrinkle? Why are old men called ruggedly handsome and old women called wrinkled and ugly? I know that all these anti-wrinkle creams have the moisturizing powers I need, but I didn't  buy any of them because I refuse to support the idea that this (see below) is ugly. 

         My body is not an item to be minutely criticized from earlobe to thigh gap to pedicured toe. It's not perfect by media standards, but I try to keep it healthy including emotionally loving it with my thoughts and words--and I'm sick of finding reasons to fix another part of it everywhere I look. 

         So to the anti-wrinkle cream producers out there, I see your lie. I know you are just creating a need for me to spend money on to fix it. But when I look at myself in the mirror I see nothing broken there. I'm housed in a working body granted me in the miracle of birth. It's beautiful, future wrinkles and all.

wrinkles: a physical showing of experiences, joys, sorrows, and a life lived

Cheers,

Amanda Kae

P.S. By the way, when I finally found a good moisturizer, it was the only cream not housed in a fancy, romantic looking, silver lined bottle. 

This stuff definitely isn't selling looks, but it works awesome!

Got any suggestions on how we can fight back against this focus on looks? I'd love to get your input.

Reproductive Rights

Hey Amanda,

This is where I alienate myself from literally everyone I have ever met. You see, I have a moderate stance on abortion. I know, how does such a thing even exist? Let me tell you why.

 #1) Legal limits on abortions can be really dangerous.
For instance I know a woman that labored for over 26 hours because they could not stop her contractions and it was illegal to medically assist with the birth of the child because it would technically be a late-term abortion.  The baby who had almost no chance of survival out of the womb to begin with was denied any chance of survival due to the traumatic labor. It very nearly killed the mother as well.

Pregnancies are weird. Circumstances change. "Medically necessary" is hard to define. Crap, "abortion" as strange as it seems, is also hard to define.

#2) Statistically, abortions are often performed on women who can't get their crap together. 
According to the Guttmacher Institute (which I assure you, is the opposite of a Right leaning institution), 48% of US abortions are performed on women that have already had one. That accounts for significantly more than half a million terminated fetuses a year. Obviously, Sex Ed is failing and abortion clinics need more teachers.

#3) Having the right to surgically remove a baby from your womb is perhaps the worst consolation prize in the history of mankind. 
Women have an indelible right to be the gatekeepers to our own bodies. We have a right to refuse anyone in whatever manner for any reason at any time. Let me say that again. Women have the right to refuse anyone in whatever manner for any reason at any time. Let's not forget that these millions of women with unintended pregnancies are also subject to life-threatening infections.

Women desperately deserve the education, resources, and most importantly, the ability to say "No, not without protection." Yeah, fifteen-year-olds shouldn't have to be saddled with parenthood. But they really shouldn't be saddled with HIV, and there's no surgical procedure that can undo that one.

#4) A fertilized egg doesn't have any rights. 
Theologically, I have no idea when a body gains a soul. But, the State has no business trying to determine the answer to that one. Setting aside for a moment the perennial question of who counts as a person-- let's just look a the embryo for what it unequivocally is- an organism. We have several laws to protect non-person organisms. It's not animal cruelty to dump bacteria into an oil spill to help clean it. It is animal cruelty to operate on a hamster without anesthesia.

"Who feels pain" is an interesting philosophical question. It's also one that many neurologists feel they can answer. However, as a word of caution to all of humanity, we've historically been really, despicably bad at answering this question, so let's err on the side of caution. And for that reason, I don't believe that a single-cell can really be protected legally. It has a hard enough time being protected biologically. But, I honestly believe that anything with a heartbeat should be treated humanely, even if you don't believe it should count as a person. That means anesthesia at the very, very least.

#5) Abortion is not a woman's rights issue. 
Yes, by definition, abortion is a woman's issue. However, abortion does nothing to promote a more just and equitable society. Abortion also helps prolong depressing cultural assumptions about the worth of women. In India and China, abortion takes 35 and 25 million more women, respectively, than men. Gendercide is a thing. How is it more legal to say "You can terminate a pregnancy simply because it's unwanted, but you can't terminate that pregnancy due to the reason its unwanted."


I'm not a huge fan of the restrictive laws that have been introduced around the country. But, I'm also disgusted that abortion is being used as a contraceptive method. Even if you don't think a fetus is a person, abortion is like burning a bunch of MRI machines because they still need to be wired. There is so much beauty and potential in those babies. I'm just not sure that tighter legal controls are the way to go about protecting them.

Mostly, I'm a big, BIG fan of education. Sex Ed. Community Outreach programs. Free clinics. Anything that gives women a better understanding for the responsibility of having the coolest organ on the planet, and the ability to watch out for themselves.

All in all, whatever your stance on abortion (which is almost assuredly different than mine), I believe you are trying to make the most moral decision about it, and I don't think you're Hitler.

Let's be good to each other,
Stephanie

Computer generated dolphin fetus...Isn't it cute? (Source)

Did you know that by 20 weeks of age, the female fetus already carries all of the eggs that she will ever have? In essence, a mother carries what will become her grandchildren inside her daughter's womb, insider her own womb.  Man, women are awesome.